Tatiana Pashkova – Candidate of Sciences in History, Associate Professor. E-mail: tatianapashkova22@gmail.com

Ekaterina Kameneva – the Fourth-Year Student. E-mail: kameneva.katya777@gmail.com

Egor Karasev – the Fourth-Year Student. E-mail: karasev. e. a.2ip@gmail.com

Nikita Kutsevalov – the Fourth-Year Student. E-mail: rainnick0@gmail.com

Russkova Darya – the Fourth-Year Student. E-mail: dascha.loli@yandex.ru

History and Social Sciences Department, the Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia.

Address: 48 Reki Mojki Naberezhnaya, 191186 Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation.

The article is devoted to the study of the phenomena of the special catalogues of textbooks for secondary schools, published by the Ministry of Public Education of the Russian Empire. During the second half of the 19th—beginning of the 20th century an intensive process of developing principles for their compilation, optimal structure and periodicity of output took place. The Scientific Committee of the Ministry was engaged in reviewing educational literature and compiling catalogs. It was called upon to play the role of a kind of filter that did not allow unprofessional textbooks into secondary school. However, despite all the efforts and the large amount of work done, ensure that only recommended textbooks were used in teaching practice throughout the empire, the Ministry has failed.